


The Language of Our Bones

by adreadfulidea



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Exxxtreme Tenderness, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:28:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25925143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: After Silna Akoak experiences a family tragedy, she feels lost and alone. Enter an unexpected houseguest, Harry Goodsir of the University of Victoria. Harry is a linguist in town to study Inuktitut and rapidly becomes a positive presence in Silna's life. Can they be more to each other, or will Silna's heart stay frozen?
Relationships: Harry D. S. Goodsir/Lady Silence | Silna
Comments: 20
Kudos: 39
Collections: The Terror Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All Inuktitut in this fic is either translated in-text or can be found in the translation guide I have included as a second chapter here. I suggest keeping it open in a second tab. Fantastic art is by attheborder. The choice not put Inuktitut in italics was deliberate, and not me misunderstanding the usual grammar conventions.

****

**1\. ataata (father)**

Silna returned to the empty house before the winter blew in again, and just in time. She took a bath and ate a bowl of cereal without milk, since she’d cleaned out the fridge before she left, and it took her another hour to notice that the light on her father’s ancient answering machine was blinking. Outside the sky was the chill grey of fall and it smelled like rain. Her face was still chapped from the wind when she pressed play.

“Oh, hello!” a man said on the recording. He was Scottish and sounded a bit startled. “Hello, Karoo. It’s just Harry Goodsir again, letting you know that I’ll be at the airport on Thursday at 3:00 p.m. as we discussed. See you soon.”

Silna stared at the machine. Her finger was still holding the button down. “What the hell?” she asked, though there wasn’t anyone there to hear her.

Here is what a stranger would have seen upon encountering Gjoa Haven, the community in which Silna and her family made their home: rows of colourful houses, laid out as neatly as pieces on a chessboard, braced against the wind and the snow. Boats bobbing the harbour and flipped upside down on the shore, fishing equipment ready to be used. The Northern Store and the co-op. Kids riding their bikes if it was summer and snowmobiles if it wasn’t. The Nattilik Heritage Center and the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church. All of it on waves of sand and rock that were bordered by water bluer than the sky itself.

Silna’s house was also blue. The windows were small to keep the wind out and it had two bedrooms, one painted the bright green of Silna’s childhood, when she used to dream about jungles and forests and running away to a place so hot and humid she couldn’t stand it. The living room walls were covered with pictures, mostly Polaroids of her family, immediate and extended. It was decorated with her father’s carvings, set on shelves made from driftwood or old pallets from the co-op. The television was an elderly affair that she didn’t watch much and the couch sagged in the middle. The kitchen was wallpapered with yellow flowers and her mother’s recipe notebook still sat on the counter.

It was a home, and it was hers, and there was an absence at the heart of it.

In the course of her investigation Silna booted up her father’s ancient PC and waited for it to load, spinning back and forth in the computer chair like she was twelve again. Which, incidentally, was the last time he’d updated any of his technology. In his view if it wasn’t broken then there was no point in replacing it, and he hadn’t ever learned how to use the iPad Silna bought him. She’d ended up reclaiming it for herself. The computer whirred and clicked and finally let her sign in.

Lucky that he’d used the same password for everything.

She found the answer she was looking for in his email. It felt creepy and invasive to be looking through it but thankfully he didn’t have much of interest in there: advertising from a shoe store he’d accidentally signed up for, a few orders from Beyond Buckskin, an ongoing argument with Aunt Meggie about something. And a correspondence with Harry Goodsir of the University of Victoria, talking about a project they were hoping to collaborate on. A dictionary? Silna closed the email and googled the university’s number and also his name.

She found his name on a faculty list for the department of Humanities and also his Linkedin page. The picture he’d chosen wasn’t particularly flattering, a blurry snap from his phone. Dark curly hair, pale skin, a general expression of discomfort. She squinted at it, trying to read his intentions in his face. The profile was a list of his accomplishments that somehow still sounded self-deprecating, which was weird. She’d never seen a Linkedin page with a personality before.

Okay, she thought, so he hasn’t heard the news. She called his department with a chasm slowly forming in the bottom of her stomach, the way it always did whenever she had to state the facts out loud. Her whole body yearned towards denial.

The girl who picked up said he wasn’t in the office, that he’d gone on a leave of absence. She couldn’t give out his personal phone number. It was against University policy.

“It’s an emergency,” Silna said. “It’s his… mother. She’s ill.” She winced at the awkwardness of the lie, but nobody could see her face but her and the hesitation must not have carried over the phone line, because the girl gave her the number.

It didn’t matter. The call went straight to voicemail.

Her problem, Silna thought as she shoved a vacuum head under a couch that hadn’t seen this much action in months, was that she was too responsible. Too quick to take on problems that weren’t her own. Too quick to say she’d handle it, even when she couldn’t. So here she was, cleaning up the house in anticipation of a visitor she didn’t want and was in fact planning to send directly back to B.C. Just in case.

She washed the cleaning dust off quickly and threw on an old white sweater. Her hair was coming loose from her braids but she didn’t bother to redo them, opting instead to tuck them up under a baseball cap. It was windy anyway, rattling the windows and trying to seep in under the door. As she opened it she turned automatically, looking back over her shoulder, her mouth open to say goodbye.

Silna caught herself just before the words came out. There was a lump in her throat. It was strange, what the muscles remembered when the mind knew better.

Gjoa’s airport was as purely functional as an airport could be. There were no bars filled with frequent flyers or duty frees here. Silna pulled up outside the terminal and went inside. There was a prop plane landed outside the building. She knew it belonged to Francis Crozier.

Crozier was an old friend. He used to fly for the big airlines back in Europe until some public embarrassment had forced him out—she’d never been told exactly what, and had never asked, but she suspected his drinking had been the cause. He’d picked himself up, dried out, and moved north. And then north again, until he was in Nunavut, flying in groups of tourists or hunters or politicians. He lived outside of town with his partner, since apparently Gjoa Haven itself wasn’t isolated enough for him.

He was in the terminal, getting a cup of coffee and talking to a flight attendant from Air North. Silna waved him over. “Did you bring him in?” she asked, when he reached her.

He raised his eyebrows at her without asking who she meant. “Yes, from Prince George,” he said. “I’m surprised you let him come.”

“I _didn’t_.”

“What?” said Crozier, his face creasing up with concern.

“I didn’t even know he was coming until yesterday,” Silna said. “Dad never mentioned it, who knows why, and now—I don’t know what to do with him! I feel like I’m going to be sending him back to the orphanage because I didn’t send for a boy. Did Dad mention anything to you?”

“Well,” Crozier started, but then his eyes flicked up over Silna’s shoulder. “Here he is,” he said, under his breath.

Silna took a deep breath, straightened her sweater, and turned to meet her destiny.

He was better looking than she expected, with big brown eyes and an appealingly bashful smile. There was a blue scarf wound round his neck made not of wool but of some soft woven material, and he wore an inappropriate—for—the—north black peacoat. He looked, in short, very much like he was used to living in places where it rained in the winter, and also very cute, like he’d popped out of a BBC production. Something about the English countryside. She wished she was in a better position to appreciate it. If things were normal she would have enjoyed seeing a new face, especially a handsome one, but as it was she was resenting him for standing there, sure of his welcome, completely unaware of how lost and sad and angry Silna felt. Blaming him was insane, of course. He was a stranger and he had never done anything to her. But anger felt safe, and she let herself indulge in it for a minute, giving him a stiff unwelcoming face in response to his very welcoming smile.

“You must be Silna,” he said, undeterred. “Your father’s told me so much about you.” He was holding two cups of the terminal’s bad coffee, and he handed one to her. “Mr. Crozier let me know how you take it.”

She looked down at the little spot of warmth in her hands. “That’s thoughtful,” she said. The following “Thank you” came automatically. “My father died,” which came after, was a shock even to her.

“Oh,” he said, looking like all the wind had been taken out of him. Well, she knew what that felt like. “I—I had no idea. I would have—I wouldn’t have come, of course. How difficult this must be for you.”

“Do you want the coffee back?” Silna asked.

“No,” he said quickly, taking her seriously, “no, of course not—here, let me—” he adjusted the bag on his shoulder and steered her over to a row of seats, like she was going to collapse from grief at any moment. Silna looked back at Crozier with alarm; he shrugged at her.

“Sit,” Dr. Goodsir said, fussing over her, and she did because she couldn’t think of a reason not to. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Silna’s mouth twitched. For the first time in recent memory, she wanted to laugh. “He didn’t _just_ die,” she said. “I mean, it wasn’t yesterday.”

“That’s good,” he said, and a look of horror immediately came over his face. “Not good, obviously I don’t mean—oh, I’ve mucked this all up.”

“No,” Silna reassured him, “this is the best response I’ve had, believe me.” She could still feel that unborn laugh, bubbling away in her chest. A strange gratitude rolled through her. She decided to take pity on him. “It was three months ago,” she said.

Three months, and three days. Eventually the time would come when she would no longer be able to count the time between before and after by the day; she looked forward to it, and she dreaded it. The idea felt disloyal.

“That’s still very soon,” he murmured. There was real sympathy in the way he said the words.

“Don’t feel bad about being awkward,” she said. “Nobody knows how to respond to something like this.” It was why canned phrases like “I’m sorry for your loss” existed—they gave people something to say in the midst of the world’s most uncomfortable silence. But he hadn’t said it, nor any of the usual greeting card lines. She liked that he hadn’t.

“I’m guessing there isn’t an easy way out of here.”

“You guessed right,” she said. “Francis, when could you bring him back?” It would be easier than trying to rebook him on Air North, even if they had to wait.

“I’m booked until the end of the month,” Francis said. He’d settled in to watch the show, ensconced in a chair with his ankle crossed across his knee. “But I can give him a ride into town.”

“No,” said Silna. “I’ll do that.” She got up and gestured for Dr. Goodsir to follow her. “We _do_ have a hotel, lucky for you.”

He put his bag into the back seat of her truck and climbed in next to her. Silna played with the radio, the signal going in and out of static until she found CBC North. Tuttavik had just started.

“Inuktitut, correct?” Dr. Goodsir asked.

“It’s just the news right now,” Silna said. “I can put on some music if you’d like.”

“No, I’d like to listen if you don’t mind,” he said. She turned towards him in surprise. “I’m not very good at speaking it yet, but I can understand some of what’s being said.”

“Well that’s no fun,” she said. “Now when we talk about you behind your back you’ll know what we’re saying.”

Dr. Goodsir laughed. His eyes crinkled nicely when he did so. The window on his side was opened a crack, blowing his curls around. It occurred to Silna that it had been some time since she’d been alone with a good-looking man. Or even one that wasn’t a literal or honorary family member. She suddenly wished she’d bothered to do her hair. Maybe put on lipstick. She was certain she had some, somewhere, at the bottom of a drawer in the bathroom.

“My skills aren’t as strong as all that,” he said. “Gossip away.”

“You do something with languages, right?” she asked. “A linguist?”

“I’m trying to be,” he said. “But I don’t have a PhD yet. Hopefully someday.”

“So you aren’t a doctor? And here I’ve been calling you Dr. Goodsir in my head.”

“Please call me Harry,” he said. “Even my students do. I’m a teaching assistant, and I also teach online courses. Not a doctor, not a professor.”

“So,” she said. “Harry. What brings you up here, exactly? How did you get in contact with my Dad?”

“The University is working on a project for Inuktitut textbooks and other learning materials. They also want to start a course teaching the language, and my supervisor would be writing that course as well. Of course I wouldn’t be qualified to do any of that on my own. Unlike me, he’s fluent. That’s in the future, but I’m hoping to be involved when it gets here. So I’m taking a sabbatical to strengthen my skills. It was my supervisor who put me in touch with your father.”

“But why are you interested in Inuktituk?” she asked. “Even most Canadians don’t care what goes on up here, forget about learning to speak like we do.”

“I suppose I’ve just always been curious about Canada,” he said. “It seemed so different from anything I knew. It’s such a vast country, and it contains everything. Plains, mountains, forest, the tundra. You could drive across the whole of Britain in a day. And,” he said, looking out the window, watching the broad blue sky go by, “It is so beautiful here.”

Silna waited in the lobby of the Amundsen while Harry booked a room. People were in the dining room having their dinner, eating stir-fry and drinking hot chocolate or tea or coffee. There was a sidebar set up for desserts. As far north as Gjoa Haven was, they still got visitors. Tourists coming up to see the northern lights or go on dog sled rides, construction workers in the arctic for some project or another, politicians here for a meeting. One of Silna’s closest friends from childhood had worked in the kitchen here before he moved to Saskatchewan with his family.

She flipped a page in a magazine. Glossy people in glossy poses trying to sell her face cream. It was taking a long time, she thought, and twisted in her chair so she could get a view of the front desk and whatever was going on.

It didn’t appear to be going well. Silna put the magazine down and went over, her hands in her pockets. “Did your credit card get declined?” she joked, which she hoped he understood wasn’t an offer for her to pay instead.

“I’m just trying to find him a room,” said Lena Tookoome, who was behind the desk and biting her lip nervously. “But we’ve got this stargazing tour here this week…”

“You wouldn’t think you’d have to worry about tourists up here, would you?” Silna asked, leaning on the counter. Lena smiled tightly. She’d always been a tense girl. She used to have funerals in the backyard for her dolls.

“I’ll take a cot somewhere if you have one,” Harry said. “I’m not picky.”

Silna was considering alternate possibilities. She had family she could ask, but they all had children or elderly relatives living with them and little space. She could pass him off to Crozier, who would let her, but their cabin was far enough outside town to be inconvenient. The truth was Silna was the one who had a free room, and it was her father that had invited him to Gjoa Haven in the first place. If there was no room at the inn, you had to open your own doors. That’s what he would have told her. This was the last thing she could do for him.

Maybe it was supposed to be this way, she thought, which was unlike her; but she thought it nonetheless.

“We can do better than that,” she told Harry. “Come on,” she said, and took him home.

**2\. aiȓuq (home)**

She left him at the kitchen table and went to get her father’s room ready.

It was exactly as he’d left it. Silna hadn’t made the bed or opened the curtains or gone through his things, deciding what to keep and what to give away or dispose of. It was all still there. She had gone in once, just after, and slept on the rumpled sheets. And then she had closed the door behind her and not opened it until now.

She opened a window to let the stale air out. His shoes were still tucked under the bed and his clothes hanging in the closet. His carving knives on the dresser. She picked one of them up, touched the blade with her thumb. There was a picture of Silna there, in a frame he’d carved himself. Her high school graduation. One of her mother too, before they’d had children, in the reddish tones of late seventies kodachrome.

Silna stripped the blankets off the mattress and brought them to the hamper in the hall. She returned with fresh bedding and made the bed, changed the pillowcases, and tidied the room. A little rearranging of the dresser drawers and she had one cleared for Harry’s usage, and space made for him in the closet as well. She considered taking the pictures with her for her own room, but left them where they were.

“It’s all yours,” she told Harry when she came back into the kitchen. “The bathroom is just down the hall. Feel free to raid the kitchen when you want—I keep irregular hours, so I don’t always have regular meal times.”

“Oh, I know all about that, I’m an academic,” he said, and left to go unpack. Silna blasted her coffee in the microwave and took his seat at the table.

He came back a few minutes later with his coat off and a package in his hands, wrapped in white tissue paper. “I brought this for your father,” he said, “to thank him for inviting me out.” He paused, and then pushed it towards her. “Would you like to take it?”

She did, not sure what to say, and unwrapped the package. It was a men’s Fair Isle-style sweater and it looked well made and expensive. A useful gift, and one that had thought behind it. She was getting a little annoyed by being impressed with her unwanted house guest.

“He would have really liked this,” she said. “And I do, too.”

“Good,” he said, his face filled with honest pleasure.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I have a casserole in the freezer.”

She received a call while she was waiting for it to finish heating up in the oven. Harry was in the living room trying to get the picture on the T.V. to look a little less fuzzy. “The signal goes out sometimes,” she called in at him before answering the ringing phone.

It was Crozier, and he launched right into it without preamble: “why is he staying with you?’

“Because there was nowhere else to put him,” she said, leaning sideways to bring the doorway into view, and the living room beyond it, to see if Harry had noticed. He hadn’t.

“I’ll take him off your hands.”

“You’re too out of the way,” she said. “What’s he supposed to do all day? It’s going to get cold soon, he can’t just walk into town.”

“Is he staying long enough for it to get cold?”

“I don’t know,” Silna said. “We haven’t discussed it yet.”

“Silna—”

“Look,” she said, dropping her voice and checking on the doorway again. “I know you’re going to say this is some weird... loneliness or something, because of my Dad, but you know I won’t be lonely here. Everyone knows me. I couldn’t be lonely if I tried. They wouldn’t let me, and neither would you. I just—” she stopped, gathering her thoughts, “—needed some time to adjust. That’s all.”

“I was going to say you’re a woman living alone, and now you’ve got a strange man living with you.”

“I do,” she said, “but I really don’t think this guy is going to try anything. He acts like he escaped from a Beatrix Potter book or something. Besides,” she added, ever practical, “I’ve got a lock on my bedroom door and I’m going to be using it.”

“Well if he does try it, call me. Or James.”

“I will. I promise.”

She hung up feeling centered and comforted, a feeling she realised was familiar; it was the same way she’d felt when she was going to school in Toronto, and she would call home just to hear her father’s voice. Like she wasn’t surrounded by strangers anymore. She pulled the casserole from her oven. “Harry,” she called out, “dinner’s ready.” He could set the table.

She gave him the grand tour of town the next day; the Northern, the museum, the college. She brought him by Gjoa’s Shoppe to get some fries, and asked if he wanted to drive further afield to go see the land a bit, maybe stop at Crozier and Fitzjames’ cabin if they were there. He seemed eager to see everything he could, maybe because he wasn’t going to be staying as long as he thought.

Silna drove them out to the shore and they stood for a long time looking out at the cold blue water. It was nothing like a postcard, nothing like the vacation-ready white sand beaches on television, but Silna always found it invigorating, being this close to the water. The salt in the air, the wind off the ocean, the ancient fact of it. It had been there for her ancestors, had provided the fish and seal and whale that they needed to survive, and it would be there long after she was gone, after Canada was a memory and something else had taken its place. Monuments didn’t matter; this did. This was real history.

“You know what our name for this place is?” she asked Harry, who had started out taking pictures (with a real camera, not his phone) but was now leaning back against the truck, looking out over the water silently. “Uqsuqtuuq. Means ‘place of plenty of blubber.’”

As if on cue, a whale surfaced far out in the water. Not much, just the curve of its back and fin, dark and shimmery under the sunlight. Too far out for Silna to tell what kind it was. She and Harry looked at each other.

“That was my indigenous powers,” she said.

Harry laughed, a sound Silna was beginning to appreciate. “Do you have any others?” he asked.

“No, but I like to let white people believe I do. It helps with my work.”

“Which is?”

“I’m a biologist. I just spent the summer tracking musk ox and caribou for the government, actually. We’re determining how climate change is altering their migration patterns.”

“That’s so much more interesting than sitting in an office all day. You do make me seem dull.”

Harry had a very direct way of making eye contact, and Silna found her face getting a little warm as a result of it. She shrugged, always awkward with compliments. “Depends on your perspective. But I like it. It makes me feel like I’m doing something that matters.”

“I’m sure it does.”

“Let’s hope.”

“If you call it Uqsuqtuuq, why is the town called Gjoa Haven?”

“Roald Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer who stayed here a couple of years back in the early twentieth century. We considered changing it but voted to keep it overall; some people have fond family memories of him. His ship was called the Gjoa. He called this coast the best little harbour in the world.”

“I think he was right,” Harry said, not in a way that made it seem like he was trying to butter her up, but honestly. It was disarming.

Silna pulled her toque down over her ears. “Wait until winter and see if you agree with him then.”

He glanced sideways at her. “Will I still be here in the winter?”

Silna shrugged, trying to wiggle out from under the weird implications of that statement. “I don’t know. Is that up to me to decide?”

“It’s your house,” he said, “so I would think so.”

“It’s my Dad’s—” she started, and then stopped herself. For better or worse, he was right. There was no one to get permission from for anything; no other opinion to consider. “You know what, it is my house,” she said, and opened up the car door. “Come on, Harry. One more stop before we go back.”

Aunt Meggie stood on the steps of her house with her hands on her hips. “Tunngahuglutit!” she called out, her sharp eyes scouring Harry over. “Inuktuurungnaqpit?”

“Ii, mikiřumik,” Harry said, not with perfect pronunciation but enough to get the point across.

Meggie took her hands off her hips and extended one in front of her, coming down from the steps. Her house dress blew around her legs, and she’d cut her hair short since Silna last saw her. “Huuvit?”

“I’m Harry Goodsir,” Harry said. He took her hand in the same careful way he’d taken Silna’s when they first met.

“He was a friend of Dad’s, Auntie,” Silna said.

“I’m Meggie,” said Aunt Meggie. “And Silna here is my ungrateful niece. We’ve been thinking she was dead, since she never comes around anymore.”

“I’ve been busy, Auntie,” said Silna.

“I know,” Aunt Meggie said, putting a hand between Silna’s shoulders to steer her into the house. “You always are. This girl is nothing but go go go,” she said to Harry, scolding. “I hope you tell her to slow down.”

“I could try,” Harry said, “but somehow I don’t think she’d listen. She seems to know her own mind.”

“Thank you,” Silna said. “See? He understands.”

“Atuat!” her Aunt bellowed as soon as they made it across the threshold. “Your cousin is here. Come say hello!”

“Jesus, Mom,” Atuat said, coming out from her bedroom in an Iron Maiden t-shirt and sweatpants. There was a gold stud in her nose and she dyed her hair a variety of unnatural colours. Right now it was blue. “ _Which_ cousin?” She stopped when she saw Harry, just behind Silna, and slowly raised one eyebrow at her in a gesture that Silna could have strangled her for. “Who’s this?”

“This is Harry Goodsir,” said Silna, in a tone that also said: don’t get any ideas. “He’s a linguist and he knew Dad.”

“Interesting,” Atuat said. “Is he staying for dinner?”

“I made seal stew,” said Aunt Meggie. “Everyone’s staying. Come on Harry, you can help me dish up.”

The second they were out of earshot she turned on Silna, her eyes shining. “He’s your _boyfriend._ ”

“He’s not,” said Silna, “and keep your voice down.”

“He is!” Atuat staged-whispered. “About time, you live like a nun.”

“I do not,” said Silna. “I just work a lot, okay. I don’t have time for dating.”

“Well, why isn’t he?” Atuat said, trying to lean around Silna to get another look. “Check him out. I’ll take him if you don’t want him.”

“Keep your hands off him before you scare him away from Nunavut permanently. He’s here to learn.”

“He can learn my body. And you are soooo jealous right now.”

Silna, reverting to childhood dynamics, kicked her cousin in the ankle. Atuat, reverting to childhood dynamics, became a tattletale. “Mom!” she yelled. “Silna’s beating me!”

Aunt Meggie’s reply floated back from the kitchen. “I don’t care. Sort it out amongst yourselves.”

“I’m gonna tell your boyfriend that you’re a bully,” Atuat said, and Silna clamped a hand over her mouth and wrestled her back into her bedroom, with Atuat fighting her all the way.

It was typically messy, with an unmade bed and clothes scattered on the floor. The artistic temperament, Silna supposed. Atuat had painted the walls with bright geometric shapes from her Kandinsky period in high school and there was a row of small sculptures on the windowsill, not soapstone but polymer clay she’d ordered from an art store in Yellowknife. In the corner was her easel and Silna drifted over to look at what was on it. Atuat, momentarily defeated, flopped down on the bed.

“What do you think?” she asked. “I’m making a bunch of them.”

It was a collage of sorts, but made with layers of canvas that Atuat had painted instead of pictures from magazines or newspapers. The layers were cut into rough ovals, large at first and getting smaller closer to the center of the canvas. The outer ovals were painted a bright blue and each subsequent layer got darker and darker, giving the illusion of looking into a tunnel. They were covered with syllabics, but not anything that made sense—just gibberish, lists of letters and random words. At the center of the canvas a small solemn face peered out, the expression unreadable. The effect was disorienting, like peering into a portal and catching a startling glimpse of something almost familiar on the other side.

“I like it,” Silna said. “It’s freaky. Have you had any luck with it?”

She meant did Atuat have any luck selling it to one of the co-operatives that sold Inuit art down south. That was how most artists promoted their art up here; it was how her Dad did. His carvings had paid for their house.

Atuat shook her head. “Do I ever? You know rich white art collectors want traditional, or something close enough that they can’t tell the difference. I don’t paint animals or landscapes, I don’t carve bone. They don’t know where to fit me into whatever categorisation system they have in their heads for Indigenous art. It’s really starting to piss me off. Why the hell can’t I just be an Inuk modern artist? White people get to make whatever they want. I hate the art market. It privileges the privileged and their lack of creativity.”

“You need an agent.”

“Or a white pseudonym,” Atuat said. “Gordie Mackenzie or some crap. Sometimes I wish I’d moved to Toronto like you did. Maybe if I was directly involved in the art scene it would be easier. Make some friends. Trick them into selling my shit.”

“I didn’t stay,” Silna said.

“Obviously,” Atuat said. She slid off the bed and pulled out something from underneath it. “I need a studio, too. I’m going to ask Dad to build me a shed out back.”

“That’s a good idea, at least for the summer.”

“All five minutes of it.” Atuat said. She dusted the canvas she was holding off with her sleeve. “Hey,” she said, flipping it over so Silna could see. “You think the Co-op would like this?”

It was a woman in an anorak, done in pseudo-traditional style, flipping the viewer off.

“I like him,” Aunt Meggie said of Harry, later, after dinner was done. “He does the dishes without asking.”

**3\. akia (the other side)**

Silna slept fitfully, caught in the grip of a very strange dream. She was wandering the tundra in a caribou parka in the middle of a snowstorm, on foot, but she couldn’t feel the cold or hear the wind. She drifted along, unbodied, through a sea of blinding white. She knew that she was heading for the coast, but she didn’t know why—just that she had to get there, and soon, or something terrible was going to happen. She couldn’t get her bearings. There were no bearings to find.

Out of the snow emerged— _something_. It looked like a polar bear at first, but the closer it got the more it didn’t at all. There was something wrong with its face. It was squashed somehow, a blunted nose and flat teeth, teeth like a man’s that didn’t belong in that kind of mouth. The muzzle was wet with blood, and when Silna looked down she saw that it had human hands.

Her father sat astride it.

Silna woke up with a jerk. Her room was freezing and she realised quickly that she’d forgotten to close the window all the way. The bright sunlight of an early winter morning was streaming in through the glass, and it had snowed in the night, a thin layer of white on the ground. Now the sky was clear, and there was frost fading from the windowpane.

She closed the window and went to seek out the heat of the shower. Harry was in the kitchen and she could smell something cooking.

“I’ve made us a fried breakfast,” he said, when she came into the kitchen with her hair wrapped up in a towel. “I hope you don’t mind that it’s fairly meat-heavy.”

Silna peeked around him. There were sausages and ham in the pan and bread for toast on the counter. “I don’t mind,” she said. “You want some coffee?”

“Tea if you have it.”

She didn’t know what kind he drank usually but there was Red Rose in the cupboard so she got that and slipped around him to put the kettle on. His side was warm against hers for the second they were pressed together. He was wearing a white t-shirt and sleep shorts; Silna allowed herself a second to enjoy the view before thinking: what the hell am I doing? She was starting to feel like Atuat had a point, which was a frequent precursor to many of her worst decisions.

Silna sat down and cleared her throat. “What do you have planned for today?” she asked.

“I was going to go get some books for studying Inuktitut,” said Harry. “From someone named Fitzjames? Your father put me in contact with him.” He said the last part very delicately, like he didn’t want to upset her. Silna didn’t really need that kind of careful handling at this point, but she appreciated that he thought she did.

“Oh, James,” she said. “That’s Francis Crozier’s partner, I know him well. He’s a very nice man, even if he does talk your ear off.”

Harry turned away from the sizzling pan. “I’m sorry, did you just say his name is James Fitzjames?”

“Yes, and that’s the reaction everyone has. Some family thing I think.”

Harry moved the pan off the burner just as the kettle went off. “Poor man. I’ve heard of names running in families but not in the same name. Was he a pilot as well?”

“He was in the Navy but he’s a teacher now,” Silna said. “Left when he got shot down over Afghanistan. Don’t worry, he’ll tell you all about it. Did he ask you to come to the school?”

“He did.”

“Good. Don’t go wandering around outside of town, it’s easy to get lost if you’re not familiar with the landmarks.”

“You should come with me since they’re good friends of yours.”

Silna hooked her foot around the rung of her chair as he came over with the food. It smelled amazing, and she felt hungrier than she had in a long while. “I’d like to but I have reports to work on,” she said. “And deadlines coming up.”

“I can understand that.”

“Are you published anywhere?” Silna asked. “I’ve got a JSTOR membership, I should have looked you up.”

“In _The Canadian Journal of Linguistics_ and _The Journal of Phonetics_ ,” he said, dryly. “Not that my work’s made much of a splash.”

“Well, you’ve got time.”

Harry was pushing his food around on the plate, his mind clearly elsewhere. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I sometimes wonder if the University life is for me.”

Silna took a sip of her tea. “Adjunct issues?”

“That’s part of it, the lack of stability. But it also feels like very little changes in that environment. I’ve been there for years and it’s always the same thing, day in and day out. Get up in the morning, go over my lesson plan, go teach, have lunch in the quad. I shouldn’t complain, I’ve been very fortunate. But it’s a routine I think I need to break. I want to be doing something that really matters.”

“That’s why I became a biologist,” Silna said. “I always knew I wanted to be out in the field and not in an office somewhere. That’s what everyone thinks success is, sometimes even up here. You get to be inside in the warm and the dry and push papers around. But I wanted to do something that made an impact.” She wrote reports and gave presentations and had even guest lectured for a course at Nunatta, but she always felt like her real work was out in the field. Her father had reflected the world around them in his carvings; she did it by categorisation, counting, identifying patterns. And hopefully, she could help it change course. “I did almost work in a Toronto lab, though.”

“Changed your mind?”

“Only when a would-be colleague said she’d never met anyone Inuit before and asked if we still lived in igloos.”

“I’m—”

“Don’t do that thing where you apologise for all white people.”

Harry buttoned his lips. He seemed to think it over. “That must have been very frustrating for you.”

It had been. She’d gone home and straight to the bedroom of her shitty Mississauga rental, lying on the bed listening to her roommate laugh at sitcoms through the wall. What do I need to be happy, she thought. One was space. Another was community. The third was understanding. The fourth was something other than more grey buildings outside the window. She’d called home the next day and made plans.

“I don’t regret it,” she said. “I ended up in a better place. Do you think everything happens for a reason?”

“Oh, god no.”

“Really?” she asked, having unconsciously expected a different answer. He always seemed so optimistic.

“No, if I believed good things happened for a reason then I would have to believe bad ones did too, that wars or hurricanes or infants dying meant something in the grand scheme of things. So I can’t believe in a moral universe that way, because who or what is picking and choosing? And why? And I’m an atheist, so I don’t believe god’s plan is behind it all.”

“And that doesn’t depress you?”

“Not at all.” He leaned forward eagerly, bumping his mug of tea with his elbow. “I think it’s wonderful. If we don’t live under a set of predetermined rules, then it means that everything is truly in our hands. We can fix it! We can’t cure every disease or stop natural disasters, but we can work for a just world. And I’ve always been too fascinated by the visible world to care about an invisible one, or what might be beyond it. There’s so much we don’t know, still.”

“So we’re free.”

“Yes. Free, that’s the perfect word for it. Free.” Harry beamed at her, and then his eyes fell on her empty mug. “Oh, I’ll get you some more.” Before she could say a word, he whisked the cup away.

Somehow it was that small gesture of care which helped her come to a decision. “Harry?” she called out.

“Yes?”

“You can stay as long as you want. You don’t have to head back the next time Francis does.”

He stopped with his hand on the kettle handle. “Really? You mean it?”

“Yes,” said Silna. She smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle in the tablecloth, not quite brave enough to meet his eye. “I like having you here.”

**4\. niptařuq (clear skies)**

Harry walked up and down the aisles, though he’d already been through them once. He bent over to look at something, discarded whatever idea he had, and kept moving. Silna followed along behind him.

“You know you don’t have to bring anything,” she said. “They’re not expecting it.”

“I know,” he said, looking discontented. “But I was taught you shouldn’t go to a dinner without bringing something.”

“I don’t think a bottle of wine would be appropriate in this instance,” Silna said. “Even if you could get one.”

“What about fruit for afters?”

“If you want to pay six dollars for an apple.” Silna said. She read the back of a can of peas and put it back down on the shelf. “I’m going to call them and see if they need anything.”

She tucked herself into a corner where the old payphone used to be. There were old photocopied ads on the wall gone blue with age: boats, tools, a litter of husky puppies someone was giving away. She peeled the edge of the paper off the window while the phone rang. “What are you making?” she asked, as soon as Francis picked up.

“Just a fish fry,” Francis said.

“Iqaluk?”

“Yes, pulled fresh from the water. We went yesterday.”

“That sounds nice, I wish you’d brought me.”

“We would have invited you if we’d known you were interested. Why don’t you take Harry before the weather really turns? If he’s been living in Victoria he’s not ready for ice fishing.”

Silna smiled at the idea of taking Harry fishing. She’d noticed he wasn’t the most graceful man when it came to the outdoors. The other day he’d slipped on the front walk, straight into the budding snowbank. There would be inevitable mishaps with the fishing line. “Maybe,” she said. “How about I bring some vinegar for the chips?”

“How do you know we’re having chips?”

“You’re having chips.”

“Vinegar is fine.” She could hear Francis fussing with something, presumably the food, though James did most of the cooking. Probably because he’d actually lived in countries where they used spices. “So how is it going? With him?”

“Great, I started sleeping with him last week.”

“Silna.”

“It’s fine, I would have kicked him out if it wasn’t. And I definitely wouldn’t be bringing him to dinner. He’s the one insisting we bring you a gift.”

“Is he? Will you be announcing the engagement tonight?”

“Goodbye, Francis,” Silna said, and hung up. She put her phone back in her purse and glanced over at the counter where Harry was talking to someone who had his back turned towards her, but she recognised that posture, and that hair. Hickey.

Cornelius Hickey had drifted into town a year ago from somewhere on the prairies. Or at least that was what he said, or implied. He could have come from just about anywhere, and he didn’t line up with the outdoorsy types that usually found their way to Gjoa or the surrounding area on a permanent basis. He struck Silna as a city kid. He didn’t have any friends or relatives in town, just a nebulous connection with Billy Gibson, whose father owned a sporting goods store.

Silna had no patience for Hickey. He always seemed to be working an angle. She was certain that’s what he was doing now, and hoped that Harry wasn’t falling for it. She selected a bottle of vinegar and made her way to the till.

Harry caught her eye for a second as she approached, an expression of barely restrained annoyance on his face. Silna bit the inside of her lip. It was almost a relief to know he _could_ get annoyed.

“Afternoon, Silna,” Hickey said as she put the vinegar on the counter. “Your hair looks lovely today.”

“Sure,” Silna said. She was wearing it down, that was all.

“I didn’t know you had a friend staying with you.”

“Probably because we don’t speak much,” Silna said, and Harry suddenly had to turn his head and cough.

“I was just telling Mr. Hickey that I lived in Victoria,” Harry said. “He was saying he had family there.”

Sure he did. An imaginary Uncle and an Aunt that never existed. “Do you ever visit?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t have much of a chance to get out there. But I hear it’s beautiful. Don’t you get a little tired of all this cold?”

“I must be used to it,” Silna said, while Harry paid the clerk. “It never occurs to me to leave.”

Hickey leaned back against the counter, much to the irritation of the clerk. He clearly wasn’t going to buy anything. ‘Me, I’d like to go to Hawaii. Maybe the Caribbean. I’d like to never see winter again.”

Silna grabbed the bag from the counter and put her hand in the crook of Harry’s elbow to steer him out of there. “You could always overstay your Visa while you’re there,” she said, and then gave him a half-hearted wave goodbye out of automated politeness. He waved back, his eyes fixed on them, not matching his smile.

“What was he saying to you?” Silna asked as she started up the truck.

“He was asking a lot of questions, actually. Mostly about you. And me staying with you.” Harry paused for a moment. “I didn’t just meet your ex-boyfriend, did I?”

Silna almost backed into another car pulling out of the parking space. “No,” she said, horrified. “Did he _say_ he was?”

“No,” said Harry quickly, “I just sensed—”

“Sensed _what_?”

“—some animosity between the two of you, that’s all. Obviously I misunderstood. Can we forget I said anything?”

“Harry,” Silna said, with absolute seriousness, “you need to know that I have better taste than that.”

“I’ll never accuse you of it again.”

“Good,” Silna said. “Why do you think he brought it up? I don’t need him getting fixated on me, I have enough problems of my own.”

“He seemed more nosy than anything. Oh, and he asked about your father’s sculptures. I take it he was an artist of some renown?”

“That’s relative for an Indigenous artist,” she said. “But yes, he did well.” She hoped they’d locked the door before they left. She rarely thought of her father’s art as valuable, but she supposed it was. Probably more so now that he’d passed.

“I told him I knew nothing about it, which I don’t.”

“I’ll show you some of his stuff when we get back,” Silna said. “Part of your education. And I forgive you,” she added, “for ever thinking that I’d let Cornelius Hickey within fifty feet of me.”

There was a long silence in the cab of the truck. No sound but the radio, turned down so low Silna could barely hear what was playing. Into it Harry ventured a question.

“... his name is Cornelius?”

Silna and Harry looked at each other and lost it at the exact same moment, completely drowning out the radio. She laughed so hard she had to roll down the window to get some air, and watched him wipe tears of mirth from his cheeks. I like him so much, she thought.

Crozier and Fitzjames’ cabin was an A-frame that looked worn on the outside but was sturdy and warm on the inside. It was decorated with items from Fitzjames’ time abroad: masks from Indonesia, rugs he brought back from India, a string of lanterns on the deck Silna had never been able to place. She suspected Crozier didn’t have much input on the interior design, and also that he didn’t want to; he rarely talked about his time in the Navy, and certainly hadn’t kept any souvenirs from it. They had a huge fireplace Silna envied, and she made a beeline for her favorite chair next to it as soon as Fitzjames let them in the house. It did smell like fried fish.

Silna put her feet up on the footstool and unzipped her coat. Harry was giving the vinegar to Fitzjames, who seemed very amused by it, and then came over to sit by the fire with her.

“Is that the sweater I gave you?” he asked.

“It is,” she said, running her palm over the front of it. The sweater was primarily red with grey and cream in the pattern, which was intricate and extended the whole length of the garment. It was warm, too—she’d taken her coffee outside that morning without being chilled.

“You look lovely,” Harry said.

Silna told herself that the warmth in her face was the warmth of the fire transferred, but she couldn’t make herself believe it. She chanced a glance at Harry and was surprised that he didn’t look away, that in fact he was looking at her like her like he _wanted_ her to see him looking at her.

“Thanks,” she said, a little breathlessly, and fought past the urge to make a joke about it. She touched the tingling heat at the back of her neck and smiled at him, unsure of what to say next.

Fitzjames solved that problem for her. “Food’s ready!” he called out from the kitchen. “Don’t linger, fried fish does not improve with time.”

Fitzjames did, in fact, tell the story about how he got shot down over Afghanistan. Crozier watched him do it with a kind of exasperated fondness, no doubt having heard it all a million times before. Fitzjames was an odd match for a little village like Gjoa Haven. He always seemed very cosmopolitan to Silna, like he should have been holding court at dinner parties in London or Paris, not frying fish for the neighbours in Nunavut. She knew he’d come from a very prominent family, and that he was adopted. One way or another he and Crozier had made their way here and they seemed to be happy enough with it. She supposed you never could tell what a person actually wanted by looking at them.

“How is your Nattilingmuitut coming?” James asked.

“Better,” said Harry. “The lesson plan you gave me helped a great deal.”

“He’s doing well,” Silna said. “We’ve been having conversations around the house.”

“Tom thinks so,” Crozier said. “He was telling me about it when he called the other night. He’s thinking of coming up here himself for a bit, actually.”

“Who’s Tom?” Silna asked.

“Thomas Blanky,” Harry explained. “He’s my supervisor at the university. And he’s an old friend of Francis’ as well. You served together, if I remember correctly?”

“That’s right,” Crozier said. He refilled his water glass. “Though Tom’s remade his career since then. I never would have thought of him as a professor.”

Silna raised her eyebrows at him; he returned the gesture. Later, when Fitzjames and Harry were cleaning up, she followed him outside when he left to have his smoke. He wasn’t allowed to do it in the house, but insisted he had to maintain one bad habit lest he go mad.

“So you’re the one who set all this up,” she said, leaning back against the wall while he lit the cigarette.

“Not exactly,” Crozier said. “I did put him in contact with your father.” He exhaled a plume of smoke. “Does that bother you?”

Silna thought about it. “No,” she said, “but I still don’t know why Dad didn’t tell me.”

Crozier shrugged. “He probably forgot, Silna. When you get to be our age the faculties don’t work quite like they used to. He had other things on his mind, I’m sure.”

Like his health, Silna thought. He’d started to get sick over the last year. Not things that immediately looked like a problem, just colds that lingered or being tired more often than usual. She’d thought that he was run down. She hadn’t seen the danger coming, but maybe neither did he. Everyone thought they had more time than they did.

“I guess,” she said, and looked up at the starry sky. “I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose.”

“How are you doing, with all that?”

“Better than I thought I would be,” Silna said. “Harry is a big part of that. I’ll admit it. It helps to not be alone.”

“I’m glad,” Crozier said. “God knows you were stubborn enough about it.” He’d wanted her to go stay with him. So had Aunt Meggie. She’d headed out to follow the caribou around instead.

“You can thank the old man for that,” Silna said. “I get it from him.”

The northern lights were starting to appear in the sky, bands of shimmering purple and brilliant green. Lightly at first, and then spreading across the sky like bleeding watercolours. Silna took it in briefly—no matter how many times she saw them, they never got old—and then put her hand on the handle of the back door. “I have to get Harry for this,” she said. “He’d hate to miss it.”

“Get James as well.”

Silna stood with her palm tucked in the crook of Harry’s arm. He kept his face turned towards the sky, making the occasional sound of awe. At one point he reached down and squeezed her free hand. She didn’t let go.

**5\. panik (daughter)**

Silna dreamt of her father again. It was still winter, but the snow had stopped. The sky above was dark velvet, lightening at the bottom as the sun began to rise. Her father reached out for her hands. The bear, or whatever it was, was there but it seemed tamed, sitting on its haunches like a giant dog, watching them with bottomless eyes.

Her father smiled and pressed something into her palm. She felt it with the tips of her fingers. A soapstone carving of a woman. She looked down and she could see that it was herself.

**6\. ulapqiuřaq (game)**

Silna found the board under her bed, tucked away since before she left for college. There was one exactly like it in too many houses to count, including hers. She hadn’t thought about it in years. It gave her an idea.

“Harry,” she said, coming into the living room where he was studying. He looked up at her, slightly owlish in his reading glasses and surrounded by papers. He was one of those people who studied by spreading everything out around him in the middle of the room. “Want to take a break? I promise it’ll be educational.”

He took his glasses off so he could see her properly. “Scrabble?” he said, reading the front of the box.

“We can do it in Inuktut. Some practical application of the written form. In the English alphabet, anyway.”

He smiled. “Are you sure you aren’t a teacher?”

“Hold on,” Silna said. “I’m going to make us a snack, first.” She made some popcorn on the stove—never microwaved, she hated the microwaved stuff—and some sweet ginger tea. Harry had made himself comfortable on the floor when she got back, setting up the board and putting pillows down for them to sit on. The night pressed against the windows outside and morning would be long in coming as the season hurtled towards its period of round the clock dark, but the house was warm and bright.

Silna started by spelling out aarluk. Using a language other than English made it a bit of a challenge, and they were probably going to run out of vowels early, but it was still fun. Harry countered by spelling aglu. “Not bad,” she said. “Maybe we should give extra points for words that don’t have a corresponding English equivalent.”

Harry shook the bag and held it out for her to get her letters. “Are we keeping score?”

“No, because I have an unfair advantage and I’d win.”

“That’s exactly what my brothers used to say of me when we played this game.”

Silna managed, barely, to spell out uravik. Harry seemed to have an endless supply of brothers. Silna kept getting them mixed up because they all had common names like John or Rob. Most of them were doctors, including his sister Jane. Silna had never met anyone from a whole family of doctors before. She gave him back the bag. “I can’t picture you being competitive.”

“Oh, you have to be when it’s your brothers you play with. Otherwise they’ll stomp all over you just to make a point.” He spelled out kublu.

“Why didn’t you go into medicine like the rest of the family?” Silna asked, while considering her next move.

“I considered it. Ultimately I didn’t want to become a doctor just because my sister had been or my brother had been. I wanted to distinguish myself. When you’re young and from a large family that seems very important I suppose.”

“I wouldn’t have the patience to be a doctor.”

“You’ve been very patient with me.”

“You’re easy to get along with.”

“Thank you,” he said, sounding surprised and pleased, like she’d given him a great compliment. “Did you ever want any brothers or sisters?”

“All the time,” she said. “But then I would remember that I had Atuat, who was more than enough. Don’t tell her I said that. Do you ever think about going back to Scotland?”

“I go back every year on my holiday.”

“Oh, I meant permanently,” Silna said. With careful consideration, she managed to spell out uan, which wouldn’t have gotten her many points if they’d been counting.

“No, though I suppose I wouldn’t rule it out in the future.”

“Canada’s loss.”

A smile spread across his face that she couldn’t quite look away from. “Would,” he asked, and then stopped to clear his throat. He looked nervous, and Silna suddenly felt like every atom in her body was lighting up at once. It was a before the storm kind of feeling, anticipation followed by excitement. “Would you like to come with me? The next time I went?’ he asked. “I only ask because we’ve been having such a nice time together, and I’m not sure how much you like to travel, but—”

“I’d like that,” said Silna. “It would be interesting to see it through your eyes, the way I’ve been trying to show you Nunavut.”

“Wonderful,” Harry said. “Oh, I can’t wait. There are so many things I’d like you to see.”

Silna opened the bag of scrabble tiles and went through them until she found what she wanted. Takuřait. _See_. She placed the tiles in the palm of his hand and curled his fingers into a fist around them. He looked at her across the board and Silna, who could hear her heart beating her ears, started to lean forward.

Someone knocked on the door.

Their reaction was dramatic. They sprang apart like they’d just been caught making out in the back of the library, Harry falling backwards and Silna managing somehow to kick the board across the floor. They stared at each other wildly.

“I should get that,” said Silna, after the knocking started again, and lurched to her feet.

“ _What_?” she snapped, pulling the door open to find Hickey on her doorstep, rearing backwards from her wrath.

“My car got stuck,” he said, fairly meekly. She looked past him to see that it was true, there was an old sedan jammed in the snow a few doors down. She must have been the only person who answered his knock.

Silna sighed. It was Hickey, but it was also freezing out and he wasn’t wearing the right kind of coat. His nose and cheeks were bright red.

“Fine,” she said. “Come in. You can use the phone to call Billy.”

For a second Hickey looked mildly put out that she’d guessed who he was going to call, but who else would it have been? He didn’t have any other friends in town. He followed her in without comment.

Harry was cleaning up the game when she returned to the living room with Hickey in tow. She stepped on one of the pieces, and carried into the kitchen with her. Hickey was asking if she’d ever considered selling her father’s artwork, his neck craned around to get a good look at it. She didn’t answer.

**7\. apihimařuq (snow-covered)**

Silna shook the snow from her shoulders as she entered the house, having stomped her feet on the steps outside to knock it off her boots. This was why nobody wore shoes inside in Canada. She unwound her scarf and hung it up in the closet to dry off. The storm had slowed her down coming back and she’d had to go a different way than planned, but at least the cold kept her fish fresh.

The house, much to her surprise, was empty. Had Harry gone to the store, maybe? His coat and boots—both from Gibson’s, bought with Silna’s advice—were gone. Well, at least he was appropriately attired. She hoped he got where he was going before the snow hit.

She cleaned the fish out in the sink and wrapped them for freezing, then went into the living room with a cup of hot chocolate to watch some TV. The signal was out so she put on a movie and tried to absorb the plot, but she kept checking the clock. Twenty minutes in Harry still wasn’t back, and she was starting to wonder if something was wrong.

She called Atuat from the old landline, as it was more reliable in weather like this than her cell.

“Hey,” she said, “did you hear from Harry tonight? He went somewhere and didn’t leave a note.”

Atuta drew in a breath. “I _told_ him to stay in the goddamned house,” she said, and Silna went cold all over.

“Where is he?” she asked. “What did he do?”

“He went looking for you!”

“Fuck,” Silna said, and scrambled for her cell phone without letting go of the receiver. Five dropped calls from Harry. _Fuck_.

“He thought you might be lost because of the storm. I told him you’d be fine, but—”

“Atuat, put your Mom on the phone. We need to form a search party.”

Silna moved as quickly as she could, gathering what supplies she thought she might need in as short a time as possible. An extra scarf and set of gloves for Harry, and a thermos of hot coffee spiked with contraband whiskey a friend in Toronto had sent her. It would make him feel warmer, while the emergency blanket she brought would do the trick for real. She was trying to stay calm, but her hands shook as she started up her snowmobile. He knew where she had been. Would he have known what direction to head in?

She met up with everyone else at the Co-op. Meggie had pulled everyone who had answered the phone into helping, and Silna felt a rush of warmth and affection for her community. Even Hickey and Gibson were there in Gibson’s father’s 4x4. They worked out who was going where, with Silna heading back towards her ice fishing shack; it had to be where he was going. All she could do is hope that she would find him on the way.

“Silna!” Atuat called, pulling down the front of her balaclava so Silna could hear her. “Good luck!”

Silna raised a hand in gratitude and drove off into the wall of white.

She was as bundled up as she could be but the snow still flew into her eyes and caught in her hair, left frost on the fur of her parka and ice crystals on her eyelashes. Coming home she had the wind at her back; now she went straight into it. She was navigating by feel, her experience with the area the only thing keeping her on track at all. The lights of the snowmobile tried to cut through the dark. All the while Silna attempted to see through the storm, looking for anything resembling a human form.

Something else appeared instead.

It was white on white, visible primarily because of its movement. Silna shut the lights off on the snowmobile and slowed down to get a better look. A bear, she thought, and she didn’t have her rifle with her. It stopped moving. It seemed to be facing her. Next to it was a smaller, darker figure. Silna thought she could see a sealskin jacket. She stopped the snowmobile entirely.

The bear stood up on its hind legs. It made a long and mournful sound that sounded almost like music. The figure next to it raised both arms into the air.

“Ataata?” Silna whispered.

And then they were gone; a trick of the storm, a trick of her eyes. She didn’t move for a minute. The wind cut through her clothes.

She started the engine and drove towards the space where they had been, suddenly sure she knew where to go. The snow was thinning; she could see now. She could see Harry, his voice taken by the wind, waving his arms frantically. He was trying to call her name.

He was shivering violently when he got on the snowmobile behind her. “Did you see—” he said, his teeth chattering so much he could barely get the words out.

“Yes,” she said, and shoved the thermos at him. “Drink this.”

He coughed when he did. “What’s in this?”

“A lot of whiskey,” she said. “Finish it, you need the heat.”

She wrapped the scarf she’d brought for him around his face when he was done, tying it tight, and then did the same with the blanket. “Hold on,” she shouted against the whistling of the wind, and started the snowmobile.

As soon as they got home she checked his fingers and his ears. They were red but not frostbitten. His nose did not appear to be about to fall off. He was still shaking, and looked slightly blurred from the Irish coffee. “Silna,” he said, when she let go off his hands.

She punched him in the shoulder. “What the hell were you thinking? Atuat told you to stay inside. You could have died.”

He winced. “When you put it that way.”

“Go take a hot bath,” she said. “I have to call everyone. The whole town’s out looking for you.”

She got Meggie after a few tries, who said she would tell the others. Silna hung up the phone and slumped into a kitchen chair. She hadn’t even taken off her boots yet.

Harry came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a bathrobe. His hair was wet. He looked like he was going to begin to apologise—which he did with more frequency than any Canadian Silna had ever met—but he stopped himself, leaning against the door frame. “Thank you,” he said, instead.

“You scared the shit out of me.”

“I know.”

Silna looked at the clock. It was nine in the evening. She felt like it was three in the morning. “Do you need anything else before I go to bed?”

“No,” he said. “I was going to lie down myself.”

Silna went into her room. Outside of it, she heard Harry close his bedroom door. There was a U of T shirt draped across her headboard, faded from a thousand washes. She stripped down to her underwear and pulled it on. The bed was inviting, the sheets turned down. She didn’t get into it. What she did do was get up and go to Harry’s room.

“Harry,” she said, opening the door a touch. “Are you awake?”

He turned over in bed, facing her. “Yes.”

“Good,” she said, and got into bed with him. He inhaled in a shocked way but made no move to stop her. He’d put on boxer shorts and his skin was still cool. She tucked herself in behind him, moulded to the curve of his back. He relaxed and moved forward to make room, reaching for her hands and pulling her arms around him in an embrace. She settled her mouth on the back of his neck. “You smell like my soap.”

“I like your soap,” he said, and raised her hand to his lips, kissing every knuckle.

Silna woke up on her back. The bedside clock said eight in the morning. It was, of course, still dark out and would be for a couple weeks yet. Silna put the flat of her palm against Harry’s spine. His skin was radiating heat. “Harry,” she said, quite loud in the little room. “Wake up. I have something I want to say to you.”

Harry rolled over on his back. He blinked up at the ceiling. There was a mark from the pillow on his cheek and he looked adorably befuddled. “What is it?” he asked.

Silna leaned over and kissed him.

“Oh,” he said, against her mouth, his voice hoarse.

“Oh.”

He kissed her in return, fully, joyously. There wasn’t much space in the bed but they no longer needed it, getting as close to each other as they possibly could. Harry kissed her mouth, the slope of her cheekbones, the underside of her jaw. He even kissed her ears, making her giggle.

Silna ran her short nails down his sides, making him twitch and groan. She sighed at both his reaction and hers, arousal rolling through her, tight and hot and sparkling. “I don’t suppose you brought condoms with you,” she said, her voice slightly muffled by a kiss.

“No, unfortunately.”

“That’s okay,” she said, and it was. There was no rush. “There are other things we can do.” She pulled her shirt off and climbed on top of him, straddling his hips. He was hard underneath her and she pushed down, grinding together until they were both panting.

Harry touched her ribs gently, with the tips of his fingers, tracing small circles on the skin there. “You can touch them,” she said, amused, and moved his hands to her breasts.

He did more than that, going up on his elbows so he could get his mouth on her nipples. Silna hissed out a breath and clutched at his curls while he worked her over with his tongue and teeth until she was throbbing and needy between her legs. She rubbed herself against the ridge of his hip, her underwear sticking to her growing wetness.

“Here,” he said, urgently, pulling away and holding two fingers up to her mouth.

Silna got the picture; she sucked on them while shimmying out of her underwear. He kissed the side of her neck and slid his hand between her legs.

The first touch of his thumb on her clit made her legs feel weak. Oh, she thought, I need this.

His fingers spread her apart and pushed in slowly. He curled them to press against exactly the right spot inside her, the one that made her eyes stream and her body light up. “ _Harry_ ,” she said, and tugged on his hair until he started to move.

He fucked her until her thighs started to shake. She held herself up by his shoulders instead, her arms looped around his neck. “Oh,” he was saying, low in his throat, like she was the one getting him off and not the other way around. “Oh, Silna, _Silna_ —”

Silna came almost silently, muffling her sounds against her own bicep. Her body informed on her, going sharp as a bowstring and then completely loose. She drifted for a minute. He slipped out of her and hugged her close.

Silna kissed him softly. She almost wanted to thank him, but that was a ridiculous thing to do after sex. She drew him out of the slit in his boxes instead, giving him a firm, slightly aggressive stroke.

“God,” he said. His eyes closed and he looked almost pained. His head thumped back against the headboard.

She liked this, she realised. She liked the way it made her feel in control, the way she could watch his face, drink in the sounds he was making. She wished she could think up something hot to say, something that would put him over the edge, but her hand on him was enough. He bit into his lip when he came, leaving a small red mark that she kissed afterward, when they were laying together in the afterglow. And if he whispered something in her ear when she did, in English or Inuktut or both, then that was their own business.

Atuat called later that day, when Harry was in the kitchen making them some supper and Silna was on the couch reading one of his linguistics books. “How’s Harry?” she asked.

“He’s good, no permanent damage.”

“Did you hear what else happened last night?” Atuat said, in a tone of voice that told Silna that she had some really good gossip. “Hickey and Gibson robbed the safe at Gibson’s father’s store and ran off with the money.”

“What,” said Silna, loudly enough that Harry poked his head around the doorway to look at her. “So they weren’t helping at all?”

“Nope. Just went straight back to the store and robbed the hell out of it.”

“Assholes,” Silna said, and then mouthed _I’ll explain later_ at Harry’s curious expression. Still, she couldn’t feel too bad for Mr. Gibson, who always followed everyone around the store when they went in, like they were going to try and shoplift an ATV. “Uh, listen. I’m going to have Dad’s bedroom free again pretty soon. So if you want to use it for a studio, go ahead.”

“What?” Atuat said. “Is Harry leaving?”

Silna cleared her throat. “No.”

“Oh really.”

“Do you want it or not?”

“Of course I do, are you crazy?” Atuat asked, and hung up on her.

**8\. tařvauvutit (goodbye)**

Silna dreamt of her father one last time. The skies were clear and blue and the water was singing beyond the coastline. They were embracing, their foreheads pressed together. When she opened her eyes he was gone.


	2. Translation  Guide

Meggie: Tunngahuglutit! Inuktuurungnaqpit? ( _Welcome! Do you speak Inuktut?)_

Harry: ii, mikiřumik. _(Yes, a little bit.)_

Meggie: Huuvit? _(What’s your name?)_

Iqaluk _(arctic char)_

Scrabble Game:

Aarluk _(orca)_

Aglu _(hole in the ice where seals come up to breathe)_

Uravik _(sink)_

Kublu _(thumb)_

Uan _(one)_


End file.
